


We've Been Here Before

by sara_donic



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: But just a little, F/M, Language, There Will Always Be Language in My Fics Just FYI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_donic/pseuds/sara_donic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their coworkers are numbingly intrusive, the restaurants she insists on running him into the hundreds and her apartment is a sty, but each night she crawls into bed beside him and the warmth of her is like a beacon, a homing device, a deliverance: <em>you are here, you are finally here<em>.</em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	We've Been Here Before

**Author's Note:**

> I thought, out of the entire wonderful season finale, the thing I liked most, more than the kiss and admittance of love, was their little bantering at the end. And I think I read something once where Mindy Kaling was like (paraphrasing a lot) “they’re not a great fit, but they love each other.” And I think I really liked that, because it means it’ll never be cotton-candy between them, and we as viewers will never really grow complacent in their relationship, the way so many of us did with Jim and Pam of The Office. So I guess this is a little bit about that.

The days slip by the way all comfortable ones do, soft and serenely, the moments sifting into his memory by the scent she wore at her collarbone that night, the way her eyes widened above a flickering candlelight, how her ass looked in that skirt bouncing ahead of him, moments he would later be unable to recall fully by location or conversation, though the flesh memory of them would always make thick warmth congeal in his chest, bring a slow smile to his face.

 

“You’re going to make me so fat,” she accuses, leaning across his kitchen island, her dark hair knotted back. She points a finger at him—a habit he’s been trying to make her break—“Don’t you dare respond to that, smart ass.”

 

He rolls his eyes and collects their dishes, snatching hers away even as she reaches out to swipe her finger across for a final taste, “I don’t wanna make you fat,” he mocks, laughs when she starts on a tirade— _Danny, how dare you_ —and joins him at the sink. She’s in that graphic sweater, patterned sweatpants, no underwear combination of laziness he’s really learned to love these past few weeks, the point of her nipples straining the fabric in her ire.

 

“I am so voluptuous it’s ridiculous.”

 

“It’s definitely something,” he offers, and she’s pinching his side, demanding an apology, distracting him from the dishes until he holds a washed one out to her and she dries it roughly, huffing when he begins humming Dancing in the Dark. It takes only a moment for her hips to sync with his, their sides flush, shuffling softly side to side.

 

“You make me so mad,” She reminds him, lays a haphazardly dried dish on its side and faces him with a fist on the full rise of her left hip, a half scowl. Some hair is slipping from her knot and curling against the column of her dark neck, making a half-circle around the purpling impression he’d gifted her with just days ago. “And is there anymore wine?”

 

There’s always more wine, always more whining, Mindy indignant and Danny unapologetic, half the dishes left unwashed as he lowers her slowly to the floor, tugs her hair loose, kisses her slant-mouthed and sighing.

 

“I love you,” he murmurs again and again, into the shell of her ear, beneath the swell of her right breast, in the dangerously deep dip of her waist, to remind her, to remind himself. It’s taken him years, years and years to admit this feeling to another woman, to admit it and to mean it, and he needs her to know, as often as he possibly can— 

 

“I know, babe. God, stick it in me already.” 

 

And mornings when he wakes she’s snoring into his pillow, drool pooling beneath her chin, and she’s more beast than any woman he’s ever dated, more severely unapologetic for it than any person he’s ever known, like a different species, a separate entity all her own. 

 

“You’re snoring, again,” he mumbles into the back of her creased neck. It’s nearly seven am and the alarm would be blaring any moment, “We talked about that sleep apnea mask, right?”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Danny, I’m gunna murder you in your own apartment.” 

 

And on the subway she’ll be a parade of loud colors and abstract textures, and when Danny closes his eyes tight he can still see the bright dots of her canary cardigan, her hot pink blouse, the corners of his eyes aching a little, as though he’d stared too long at the sun. 

 

They can’t find any seats, so they lean against a metal pole, Mindy pressing against it full-bodied.

 

“Those things are covered in germs.”

 

“You are.”

 

“God.”

 

He’s keeping an eye out on any masculine men that enter and exit, something he’s done for years now. He’s got an instinct for them at this point, perhaps more pronounced than Mindy’s, tall, strong-chinned men she’d leer at without shame. But then the hand in his squeezes a little, Mindy raising her head and preening at him. Her dark lashes are tangled together at the corners of her eyes and it feels all of a sudden a little superfluous. For the second week in a row he reminds himself it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter if she’s looking or if they are. Mindy’s fingers are curled in his, her long thumb tracing letters—D + M she’d blatantly admitted last week, like a fourteen-year-old girl—and he gives her one of those subdued, gentle smiles, the ones that last long after she’s looked away.

 

And at the practice he ignores Tamara and he ignores Beverly, Peter and his horrendously inappropriate hand gestures, Jeremy’s sly looks, his mocking accent— _would you mind not having sex in the break room_ —Mindy drinking it all in, loving the attention enough for both of them. She releases his hand and curls her whole arm around his, leans her head into his shoulder.

 

“Oh, hi you guys.”

 

It’s been two weeks, and Danny’s really starting to get annoyed. He’d have thought they’d let up after a few days, but Peter always makes sure to enter his office with a palm over his eyes and shit-eating grin, and Morgan wants to compare notes on a daily basis.

 

“You never even slept with her!” Danny reminds him, the Castellano anger, always so ready to bubble forth, becomes especially apparent when words are exchanged about their women.

 

“But I _almost_ did,” Morgan points out, “So I know what I’m talking about.” And Danny will admit these aren’t exactly points of pride for him.

 

“Out of my office,” he demands, Morgan holding both hands up in surrender, looking much more affronted than necessary. 

 

“Danny, please don’t yell at Morgan, okay?” She’s walking past his door at that exact moment, a cup of tea in her hands, “He’s going to tweet all about it and it makes me look so bad for being with you.”

 

“Are you kidding me? Could the people in this office be any more intrusive? They have no sense of boundaries.”

 

“Danny,” she enters fully, rolling her eyes like he’s the one at fault, always Danny, Danny, Danny, in her cartoon-mouse voice, “They’re just happy we’re together.”

 

“Morgan wants to give me pointers on how to handle you in bed.”

 

“What.” Her mouth pops open about as wide as her jaw will allow, “I’m going to murder him.”

 

“Yeah, well,” he stands, makes to approach her, and the words on his tongue are _this is why we shouldn’t have told anyone_. But he stops himself before they form fully, thinks how they’ll help no one. “Don’t go too hard on the guy.” He offers instead, and when she scoffs loudly, makes general noises of discontent, it’s enough.

 

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything dirty,” Peter announces loudly as he enters, one hand over his eyes, his ring and middle fingers separated enough to peep though. Morgan and Tamara are hanging behind him, peering in with hopes that he might be.

 

Mindy giggles a little, flips her hair, looks entirely too flattered, and she’s so much like a teenage girl at that moment, Danny worries Chris Hansen will come bursting through his door, demanding answers. 

 

“Alright, everyone out.” There are general murmurs of disgruntlement, Peter leaving at once, proving to Danny he’d only come in to give him a hard time. Mindy of course, doesn’t include herself in that demand, and Danny supposes he doesn’t mind it entirely when she takes a seat across from him, asks him if he knows what he’s wearing to dinner tonight.

 

And at dinner the appetizers will run into the twenties, the entrée portions are small and menial and still cost, somehow, about as much as a small city. Mindy loves the low candlelight though, the live violin, the way their waiter answers her every comment and question with _Yes, Madame, No, Madame_ and fills up on breadsticks.  
“Do you wanna try some of my foie-gras pate?” 

 

“I’m enjoying my goat intestines, thanks.”

 

Danny’s never taken a woman to a place like this, not even when he was trying to woo Christina’s size two pants off, but figures Mindy’s always been the sort to eat this stuff up. She’d been Instagram-ing each course of this seven course meal if that was any indication, and Danny could admit it was a little bit worth the cost, worth wearing the tie to see how lovely she looked in that dress, tight and red, her cleavage pouring out over the top whenever she leaned over for a kiss.

 

“Danny, doesn’t this music just make you think of Florence in the summertime?”

 

He’s never been to Florence, let alone in the summer, and knows she hasn’t either. With Mindy there’s always a scratching remark he can make, her entire dialect one big rom-com cliché, but moments like these, the words always get caught in his throat. 

 

She looks so decidedly hopeful, so beside herself in happiness, in good fortune, and it’s like pulling a wailing child safely from a screeching mother and seeing that look for the first time, the awe and the wonder, and knowing, in some way, you are very responsible.

 

“Sure, Min,” he answers and he thinks, _I love you, I really love you._

 

These days, thinks Danny, worries Danny, will pass, and probably sooner than later. He will grow more and more tired of her childish inquisitions, her high-pitched analysis of Meg Ryan, and she’ll wish he tried harder, loved louder, would take her on one of those horse-carriage rides through central park he hates so much. This time will come, and she’ll always be brighter than the sun, smart as a whip, and there will be other men, better men, and she will always have a way of pulling them toward her. He’ll fuck it up, pull away, do his Danny Castellano thing and leave her high and dry, supremely heart broken and slipping away to a different bed, a different practice, a different set of friends, but—

 

But

 

Each night she crawls into bed beside him, and the warmth of her is like a beacon, a homing device, a deliverance, so clear and pliably she splays herself open for him— _I knew I loved you after the first time you kissed me,_ she’d admitted in whisper against his collarbone one night, _I told Cliff that I did and he thought I was talking about him_. He thinks how Mindy loves, purely and full-bodied, how it was one kiss and she’d decided, believed, knew with all that she was. He’s not entirely sure he deserves that, this woman’s complete and easy acceptance of love. He knows Mindy’s endgame in all this, and supposes it’s pretty close to his own. She wants a future with him, someone to wake up beside each morning, marriage, children. And the details of how they’re going to get there may still be a little fuzzy, but here’s what Danny knows for sure: she wants a forever. She wants it with him. He mumbles disjointed apologies against her bare breasts, garbled and incoherent, for him, for them, for everything that’s ever happened between them and anything that ever will.

 

He is sorry, sometimes, that he kissed her. He thinks, if this ends, ends for real, it will end badly, earth-shatteringly, the entire world with narrowed eyes on him, yet another asshole to break Mindy’s resilient heart.

 

But if it doesn’t, he also thinks, Mindy liquid fire beneath his trembling palms, her strong legs secured around his waist like a lifeline, if he makes this work, sees it though, he can imagine being happy here, buried inside Mindy, happy here forever. 

 

*

 

They’re at the mall. They’re always at the mall it seems, or some sort of shopping center, Mindy in her endless quest for clothing, her belief that she very truly has nothing to wear.  
It’s loud and it’s bright and Mindy can’t stop talking it seems, can’t stop laughing, and when her joy gets to be like this, Danny can’t quite believe he’s around to witness it, can’t quite believe he might have something to do with it. She’s all wide grins and wild gesticulations, all _Danny Danny Danny_ , she’s on a different plain than him, a separate plateau, a million miles away. She surpasses him. 

 

“I’ve only been here like twice,” Mindy explains when he complains about all the walking, and drags him over to a mall directory. It towers over them, colored lines intersecting at every angle, the legend at the bottom spread wide: purple for women’s apparel, green for sporting goods, orange for food stands and on and on and on. 

 

And smack in the middle there is a star, dime-sized and a bright red, the slim, black text beneath it comforting somehow: You Are Here. Mindy’s manicured index finger hovers above it for a moment, then taps twice. She traces a convoluted purple line up to the Banana Republic.

 

“Come on, Danny,” she chirps, turning her palm over in his, twisting their fingers together, the whole world watching. Danny glances at the sign again, at that tiny star, and thinks it winks a little. _You are here_ , Danny reads once more, and something in his rib flutters to life. It feels a little final, as though he’s come full circle. He smiles crookedly at Mindy, and with the tip of his thumb traces D + M softly across her knuckles. She’s prattling on about new shoes now, demands he buy them for her because you love me, right babe? _You are finally here._

**Author's Note:**

> I love that last paragraph so much, and I know it’s kind of tacky to say that about your own writing, but I am very proud. Also, I think with someone like Danny, it must be very difficult to accept the fact that you’re in love again, because it means you’ll want to eventually be married again, and it brings on the fear of being cuckolded again. So I think I wanted to give him this journey because in my head I wanted him realize he’s finally at that place, and to not be afraid, and congrats man, you deserve it.


End file.
